Beaten/Starved: Israeli Recounts Hamas Prison

[MsAmerica]

Beaten and Starved: Israeli Hostage Recounts 2 Years of Captivity
Segev Kalfon said he endured physical abuse and mind games during 738 days in the hands of Hamas.
By Natan Odenheimer and Isabel Kershner

Like many hostages, Mr. Kalfon’s account of his 738 days in captivity included numerous examples of physical and mental abuse. The captors broke his teeth, starved him and pressured him to convert to Islam....

Mr. Kalfon described being deprived of food. During one stretch, he had to make a small can of beans last two days. At times, standing became a struggle... In that first week, when he asked to use a bathroom, he said a gunman tripped him every step of the way and whipped him repeatedly... The six hostages were given rice with worms, moldy pita and sometimes nothing at all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/world/middleeast/israel-hostage-hamas-gaza-torture-segev-kalfon.html

Hamas are truly evil.

Source: trust me bro

Given that the OP has linked to the source, this is spectacularly lame. Of course the alternative is to automatically disbelieve because Hamas are well known for being cuddly.

Israel routinely tortures Palestinian prisoners. Both as bad as each other.

Are you saying the man who was held hostage by violent terrorists by violent terrorists is lyong about his treatment? Why would he do that?

I think @MaryPaul is just voicing a bias against Israel.

And yet I've seen many a poster on here insist that the hostages were treated well,

I'm sure that in any conflict, there will be cases of humane captors treating prisoners humanely. Also, of course, the top people will insist that everyone is acting properly, even though no one in their right mind would believe that.

www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8dy8r7lq0go

Okay but what does that have to do with the hostages? There are already threads about this.

It shows that there are atrocities and human rights abuses on both sides, that is important context.

I wonder if there will ever be a thread about thr plight of the hostages without people jumping in with whataboutery.

Unlikely as it is the same conflict after all

It is unnatural to treat the two things as separate, when they are not separate at all.

There is no thread allowed on mumsnet about the suffering of a Jewish person that doesn't also mention the suffering other unrelated Jews have caused Palestinians.

Somehow this isnt recognized as the absolute disgrace it is.

I'm pretty sure that most of us are smart enough to know that's true in any conflict.
However, only one side has a half-century history of terrorism.

Excuse me? This is a documented rule? I find that very hard to believe.

One side has a half century history of occupation, land confiscstion, state killing of multiple thousands of civilians, interment without trial, and human rights abuses. Which one would that be?

Why don't you talk about it on one of the literally hundreds of threads about the topic instead of desperately trying to derail this one?

This is one of the threads about the topic.

Nice try, but, for instance, about land confiscation, as I understand it, Israel basically won it in the time-honored method of a military conflict. Israel's current incursions are horrible, but there is in fact no "country" of Palestine. It's worth nothing that none of the obvious neighboring countries, like Egypt or Jordan, stepped up in the big way to help. They all seem fairly contemptuous of Palestinians as well.

It's really not. It's about the Israeli hostages. Which apparently we're not allowed to talk about.

Threads about the Israeli hostages are by definition threads about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, they can't be anything else.

They weren't taken hostage by the IRA or the ANC. It's not an event that floats in a bubble. It is located in its own very specific historical and geographical context, and can't be understood outside of that.

This thread is specifically about people who were kidnapped from their homes in Israel and subsequently treated inhumanely. If you want to talk about "the wider conflict" maybe go to one of the hundreds of fucking threads about it. Because god forbid we are ever allowed to talk about what the hostages went through without someone showing up to go "yeah but Israel have done bad stuff too"

No they weren't kidnapped by the IRA. They were kidnapped by Hamas. Murdering terrorist scum.